Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was a lieutenant-general in the Nazi SS organisation, Gestapo chief, and head of Reich security. A favourite of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Heydrich controlled all police activity in the Third Reich and was instrumental in carrying out the widespread persecution, detention, and murder of Jewish people, communists, political rivals, and others considered enemies of the Nazi state.
Heydrich was the leading Nazi in German-occupied Czechoslovakia where his brutal regime earned him the nickname the 'Butcher of Prague'. Heydrich was assassinated by the Czech resistance in May 1942. Had he lived, it is certain that Heydrich would have been hanged at the Nuremberg trials of 1945 for his systematic crimes against humanity, particularly his direct role in the Holocaust and murder of six million Jewish people.
Early Career
Reinhard Heydrich was born in Halle in Eastern Germany on 7 May 1904. His father, Bruno Heydrich, was a distinguished musician, composer, and music teacher from Dresden. Heydrich's mother was Elizabeth Maria Anna Amalie Krantz, whose own mother was Jewish. Elizabeth was a humble actress, but it was her Jewish connections that plagued Heydrich's confidence throughout his career as a virulent anti-Semitic Nazi.
Heydrich joined the German Navy in 1922. He impressed his superiors and rose up the ranks, working primarily in communications and intelligence. In his free time, he "was a first-class fencer, excellent horseman, skilled pilot, and a talented violinist" (Boatner, 214). In April 1931, Heydrich was obliged to leave the navy following a scandalous relationship with the daughter of a shipyard director. The girl became pregnant, but Heydrich refused to marry her. Heydrich already had a long-term attachment going on with Lina von Osten (1911-1985), whom he married at the end of 1931.
It was also in 1931 that Heydrich joined the fascist National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) or Nazi Party for short. Lina was a member of the Nazi Party before Heydrich and as anti-Semitic as her husband. Heydrich also joined the Nazi paramilitary group the SS (Schutzstaffel) where he received a series of rapid promotions. Heydrich reached the rank of Obergruppenführer or lieutenant-general in July 1934. Heydrich was a perfect fit for the Nazis:
The very picture of blond Aryan handsomeness…His blue-eyed good looks, athletic prowess, arrogant mien, and musical talent hid a neurotic personality which was deeply divided, uncertain, and treacherous.
(Dear 416)
According to Albert Speer (1905-1981), the Nazi armaments minister, Heydrich was "always neatly dressed, and well bred…capable of unexpected decisions at any moment, and once he had arrived at them he would carry them through with a rare obstinacy" (Speer, 503-4)
Heydrich, who had gained experience working in the department of military intelligence when in the navy, was directed to create an equivalent branch within the SS. The SD or Sicherheitsdienst was founded in 1934. Heydrich was the rising star of Nazism, and in the same year, he was appointed the leader of the Prussian Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Heydrich's career progressed thanks to him being an "organizer with a genius for intrigue and a greed for power" (Boatner, 215). Heydrich had proven his worth with his organisational contribution to the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934, when the Nazi paramilitary group the Sturmabteilung (SA) was, on Hitler's orders since it was becoming too powerful, ruthlessly purged and its top commanders executed.
In 1936, Heydrich became the head of a new Nazi organization within the Ministry of Interior, the security police, known as Sipo or Sicherheitspolizei. This effectively meant that Heydrich controlled both the Gestapo and the criminal police or Kriminalpolizei (aka Kripo) and made him deputy to the feared SS leader Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945). The historian H. Thomas describes Heydrich as Himmler's "assiduously brutal yet servile second in command" (40). The Himmler-Heydrich working team operated well together, but Heydrich despised Himmler in private, once telling his wife he imagined him "in his underpants then everything was all right" (Cimino, 54).
Heydrich used his powers ruthlessly to imprison, torture, and execute anyone he considered a threat to the state or his own position in the Nazi Party. Heydrich was not bothered by such conventions as first gathering evidence against the accused, rather, he preferred preventive measures, that is, arresting people who might become enemies of the state before they could do any harm. He pursued a relentless persecution of anyone considered an enemy of Nazi Germany such as Jewish people, communists, freemasons, homosexuals, habitual criminals, and church figures. Heydrich kept thousands of dossiers and index cards on suspects, all carefully colour-coded to indicate which particular offence against Nazism they were guilty of. Responsibility for the Kristallnacht ('Night of Broken Glass') pogrom against German Jews (loosely defined by the 1935 Nuremberg Laws) of November 1938 is sometimes laid at Heydrich's door, but he had long urged Hitler for a more systematic and legally-based persecution of Jews than mere odd nights of terror.
When Hitler was looking for an excuse to attack Poland, it was Heydrich who organised a false flag mission on the Gleiwitz radio station. In the mission, disguised SS members left machine-gunned bodies to make it appear as if Poles had attacked the German station. Hitler then gave the green light for the invasion of Poland in 1939. In September 1939, Heydrich was duly rewarded with his appointment as head of the Reich Security Main Office or RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt), a new organisation, which meant Heydrich now controlled the Gestapo, Sipo, Kripo, and the SD. The RSHA had three main roles: policing and repressing enemies of Nazism, gathering intelligence, and eliminating those people identified by the Nazis as being racially inferior. In none of these roles was the RSHA limited by any legal restrictions. Heydrich's ultimate objective was to have what he described as "total and permanent police supervision of everyone" (Stone, 164).
The Final Solution
Heydrich was one of the main proponents of the Final Solution. As head of the RSHA, he, along with his principal lieutenant Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962), organised the deportation of Jews to the eastern side of the Third Reich. Forced emigration was the first 'solution' to Hitler's 'Jewish problem'. The second 'solution' was confinement of those who remained through the formation of ghettos in cities. It was Heydrich's idea that Jews, whom he described as "subhuman" (Friedländer, 313), should wear a yellow Star of David badge for ease of identification and as a humiliation. By mid-1941, the 'final solution' was decided: execute Jews en masse. Heydrich communicated this change of policy to his police staff at the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, held outside Berlin. Heydrich boasted he would see that 11 million Jews were eliminated. For this terrible purpose, Heydrich ordered the conversion of concentration camps into death camps, Auschwitz becoming the most infamous. The diabolical scheme was called Operation Reinhard.
Jews and other 'enemies' also suffered when the German army occupied new territory, especially on the Eastern Front. When this happened, the regular army was followed up by SS groups of mobile security forces, the Einsatzgruppen. These 'deployment groups', controlled ultimately by Heydrich and kept highly secret, murdered and deported anyone they saw fit, including women and children. Very often entire villages at a time were rounded up and executed, but particular targets included Jewish people, local officials, partisans, prisoners of war, Romani, and those with mental disabilities. Typically, the victims were forced to dig their own grave before being shot or gassed using trucks. Once new territories were fully occupied, the Nazis applied the same 'solutions' to people they labelled undesirables as they had done in Germany and Austria.
Assassination: Operation Anthropoid
March 1939 had seen Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia. While the Slovak region broke away and Hungary claimed parts of the old Czechoslovakia in the south, the Nazis treated what remained as an administrative area within the Third Reich. This region was called the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich was appointed the Deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, a title, as so often in the Nazi's perverted schemes, which disguised the fact that Heydrich offered anything but protection to the Czech people. The Reichsprotektor's first act was ominous: he had the SS flag flown from the turret of Prague Castle. Heydrich promised to "Germanize these Czech vermin" (Boatner, 215). Heydrich aimed to make the Czech heavy industry, vital to Germany's war effort, more efficient, and so he instigated such ruthless policies as withholding food ration cards from workers who underperformed.
Heydrich, in his attempts to quash the underground resistance movement, ordered thousands of arrests of Czech men and women, many of whom were later executed in public. So brutal was Heydrich's rule, he became known as the 'Blonde Beast', the 'Hangman of the Reich', and the 'Butcher of Prague'. Czech intelligence and British military intelligence related these events to the British government, and so, for the only time in the Second World War (1939-45), the assassination of a top figure in the Nazi regime was ordered. The Czechs gave the final approval since Heydrich was so brutal compared to his predecessors that even if retribution were taken, his removal would probably save more innocent lives in the long term.
Two members of the Czech Resistance were first trained in Britain. In an operation code-named Anthropoid, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík were then parachuted into Bohemia on 29 December 1941. The two agents began to study Heydrich's movements to ascertain the best time and place to make their attempt on his life. The task was made easier since Heydrich foolishly followed exactly the same routines, such as using the same route to travel between his headquarters in Prague Castle and his villa at Panenské Břežany 6 miles (10 km) to the north of the capital. Hitting Heyrich while in his Mercedes car was immediately identified as the best opportunity of killing the Nazi, especially as he usually had no escort and always sat prominently in the front seat. The place of the attack was chosen: a tight corner in the suburbs where the driver would be obliged to slow down.
Kubiš, Gabčík, and their accomplices gathered at the chosen target area on 27 May 1942, and when Heydrich's car slowed, Gabčík stepped out into the road. At almost point-blank range, Gabčík aimed his Sten machine gun at the Nazi chief, but the gun would not fire. The Germans in the car fired at their assailant with their pistols, hitting Gabčík twice in the legs. Kubiš then stepped in and threw a grenade at the car. The grenade hit the back door and exploded, punching a hole through the car. Heydrich staggered out of the car and fell down on the road. Gabčík, Kubiš, and the rest of the team escaped the scene. Heydrich was taken to a nearby hospital and treated for a wound in his side which was deep, but his life was not considered in danger. However, the foreign materials that had entered Heydrich's wound, such as parts of the car body and upholstery, caused blood poisoning to set in a few days later. Heydrich died on 4 June. He was given a full state funeral in Berlin, with Hitler in personal attendance, the Führer laying a wreath on Heydrich's coffin.
Reprisals
Heydrich was replaced as Reichsprotektor by Karl Hermann Frank (1898-1946), who offered a huge cash reward for information regarding the assassins. There was also the ominous warning that anyone found giving aid to the Czech agents would be shot, and all members of their family would also be shot. The seven agents directly involved in the plot were betrayed by the traitor Karel Čurda but fought to the death when the Nazis stormed the church they were hiding in, Prague's church of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. Four churchmen were then executed for helping the agents, as were over 250 more Czechs suspected of having given aid to the operation.
The Nazi reprisals for the assassination were brutal in the extreme, although not as horrendous as Hitler first intended, which was to immediately execute 10,000 Czechs. Frank advised against this, not on any humanitarian grounds, but because it would make it look like the Nazis had no control over their protectorate. Instead, on 9 June, Frank selected the village of Lidice near Prague as his first target, principally because it was considered a hotbed of resistance fighters. 199 men and boys were shot at Lidice, 11 women were imprisoned, 198 women were deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp north of Berlin, and 98 children were taken to Germany for adoption, although 81 of these were later executed on racial grounds. The village itself was razed to the ground, and the ruins blown up using dynamite; the whole process was filmed. Other villages, notably Ležáky and Bernartice, received similar treatment. After the war and the fall of the Third Reich, the name Lidice was adopted by many towns across the world as a memorial to the depravity of the Nazi regime, a reign of terror that Heydrich had been instrumental in inflicting upon the people of Europe.
